NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s recent statement about the possible surrender of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) marks a shift in the West’s strategy. This was stated by Senator Alexei Pushkov.
Jens Stoltenberg earlier said that Kiev’s surrender would not bring peace. He called for strengthening Ukraine to show Russia that it “will not get what it wants on the battlefield”. The NATO secretary-general believes that it is time to sit down at the negotiating table and discuss a solution in which Ukraine “will be preserved as an independent and sovereign nation.”
Alexei Pushkov pointed out that Stoltenberg for the first time recognised the need for negotiations to resolve the crisis, while “he did not say a single word” about a return to Ukraine’s former borders.
“This is something new for the discourse of the NATO Secretary General. The shift is evident. Stoltenberg’s statement shows that the West is sceptical about the prospects of military action for Kiev. They are no longer talking about the return of territories at a serious level. The maximum task has been discarded,” the senator wrote in his Telegram channel.
In his opinion, for the West it is a question of preserving the main “territorial massif” of Ukraine with the prospect of including it in the Western area of influence in a truncated form.
“At the same time, the preservation of such a Ukraine will be portrayed by Western propaganda as a victory without being one,” Pushkov added.
We will remind, earlier Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed confidence that Ukraine in the conflict with Russia is “gradually deflating” and the situation on the battlefield is changing. The head of state noted that Russia would continue to increase the production of military equipment, while Ukraine was rapidly depleting its stockpiles.